Sykes highlights traction problems at the second race at Imola WSBK

Tom Sykes finished Imola’s second race in third place. The Kawasaki rider did a recovery race, just as his teammate, but the rider failed to be as fast as the two-time winner, Jonathan Rea.

However, the rider took another podium and proved to be relatively competitive in enemy territory. Despite reaching the third place in the championship, Sykes says his race was quite complicated, since the #66 suffered from traction problems.

‘It is positive that I am now third in the championship, so we are coming back. We had a difficult feeling with the front of the bike today and it was not easy to do what I wanted on the entry to corners. That meant I suffered with rear traction on the exits, so it was difficult for me to manage the race. I kept pushing and I could see the guys in front of me had better overall speed but, strategically, I tried to come back at them and slowly, slowly got there’, the rider told in an official statement.

However, and despite a positive result, the british claims that the double crash of van der Mark and Melandri made his race easier:

– Michael van der Mark made a mistake and he and Marco Melandri were out of the race and that made it easier for me to manage. On a ‘bad’ day I was able to take a podium so I have to be happy for this.